


Gaudete

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: DUNNETT Dorothy - Works, Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: 1500s, Incest, M/M, Rough Wooing, Scotland, Truce, Yuletide 2017, Yuletide Treat, outlawry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 01:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13113024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: 'Culter, always gifted with a special intelligence in the field...'





	Gaudete

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



February 1548, north of Dumfries.

"It _is_ theology," said Lymond, delighted. "Concupiscence, consanguinity, and certainly not continence-" He yelped. Richard, divested of trews but not of knees, had aimed a blow to Lymond's nether regions which should it have landed might well have enforced the third of the three. "Nay, consider charity!" Lymond chided, enragingly fey.

"From _you_?" Richard said. Awakening had been abrupt and disturbing, not least for pointing up his own over-confidence. Lymond had caught him naked, puissant, and unarmed. He had both hands fisted in Lymond's jerkin, but the catcher, it seemed, was caught. Lymond's weight held him to the bed. Lymond's long fingers were fastened around his wrists, a grip as implacable as the embrace of an iron circlet. His unkindly knife was under the bolster. His uncharitable sword, at the door. " _Towards_ you?" His ire, at least, was palpable. 

"Assuredly from me, mon frère," Lymond said. "From whom else?"

"Keep it," said Richard. Like all the dark Culters, he was slow to rage and black with it, roused, and roused he was: ambushed by his younger brother, that known outlaw, thief and fornicator, in his own bed, at night, with a goodly dozen of his own men standing guard below and half an army outside. Although, to be fair - and Richard pared his sense of parity with a painful edge - half a _Scottish_ army, which disdained accounting and fluctuated by the time of day. The pele tower was Midculter's and stoutly built, the windows no wider than the necessary draw of a hilted crossbow, and the roof freshly rebuilt with sound bog oak and Irish gold. And yet Lymond, undeniably, held him down to the bedclothes intemperate and divested of modesty. "Keep your charity," Richard hissed. "Or take it to _my wife_."

He was aware, straining in useless and raging anger against familial bonds, that something had shifted. Lymond was very still. "You have more need," he said. His voice had lost its unwelcome levity.

Black rage still had Richard in its grip. "Not from you." He spat the words out. Lymond had given his brother's new-wed wife emeralds, green as grass, the glitter of them a honed steel shaft to the belly. Richard bled.

"No. Listen," said Lymond. "Richard. Half the English army lies at Dumfries-"

It was common gossip everywhere north of the Eden Valley. "Where do you think I'm going!" roared Richard.

They both froze. It was remarkable, Richard thought, that neither of them were prepared to countenance disturbance, and he with a goodly portion of half the Scottish army at his beck and call. He should call the guard. He should see Lymond hung for what he had done, captured, bound in irons, called to account, sentenced, hung, beheaded, burnt... _grovelling_.

There was a tap on the door. "Lord Culter?"

In truth, he craved no hands on Lymond but his own. 

"Nothing," Richard called. "Nothing. A dream." 

He had, it seemed, stopped fighting. Lymond's grip had not eased. His brother sat on his legs heavy as the Stone of Scone and twice as animated, heated where the threadbare blankets were not, denser in weight than Richard would have judged. In the February chill of the unheated room, his breath was a misted warmth against Richard's cheek. The veiled moon gave him the barest outline of Lymond's blond head, a muted delineation of layered woollens. The plaid under his fingers was rough-weaved. Lymond disguised would give the impression, no doubt, until he opened his mouth, of some cottar's son.

The watchful silence was still weighted. Richard grunted, harsh as a bull-frog, snuffled like a calf with a head cold, and rattled, for as many breaths as it took the watcher to descend the stairs, into the rhythmic patterns of sleep regained.

Lymond said, very swift and threaded with laughter, " _I am the knight. I come by night..._ "

"Shut up," said Richard.

Remarkably, Lymond did.

"I am not interested," Richard said. "In your excuses, or your reasoning, or your damnable, dammed _interest_ in my wife. I understand you have been passing information to Maxwell. One can only hope, I assume, you are not doing the same to Wharton. Report."

A soundless, indrawn breath chilled Richard's cheek. He had not known, then. But Lymond was speaking, urgently, his voice low, ignoring the unveiling and clearly concerned with greater matters than the capital crime of treason.

"Listen," Lymond said. "Lord Wharton and the English army lie at Dumfries. You know this. You aim unsuspected for his flank. Maxwell will join with you, as will Buccleuch - he has no choice, Richard, he must and will. But Wharton has already outflanked you. Yesterday at noon he sent his son ahead, and half the English horse. They ride to Durisdeer, and there the only Scots to stand in opposition are the Douglasses."

The false Douglasses, of black, quicksilver, rotted hearts, as likely to turn tail to the English as stand with the Scots. This was news, and not good - if Lymond had picked a side and that his brother's, and for once told truth. 

"Angus lies at Drumlanig, and persuades Wharton the Douglasses will not engage. But Maxwell has the upper hand and is in place, besides. Under Maxwell, the Douglases will stand and fight, and fight well. Should the young Wharton break, he retreats back to Carlisle. Should young Wharton stand, he is under orders to join the older north of Dumfries - in either case," said Lymond, "In rout, retreat, or rupture, his route crosses yours."

"How do you know this?"

"I saw him with my own eyes, Richard, and your men are closer than my own. Do you think I would risk Sybilla?" Lymond said. 

"I think you would risk anything in pursuance of your own ignoble ends," said Richard.

"For the love of God," said Lymond, and removed his hands, as if proffering an exasperated peace. "I am not asking you to change your plans. Set a watch on all sides, and not the green and winsome lads you have below. Guard your reserves. Have an eye to the north, to the younger Wharton, as well as the old. In retreat or not, the younger is competent and disciplined. I have no mind-"

He broke off. Richard, released, leaned back. The moon, briefly unveiled, lit Lymond's hair, and the unmistakable high-boned arrogance of the curve of his cheek. 

"Mariotta lies at Culter," Richard said. He had thought he was not a jealous man. He was wrong. The thing crawled under his skin, bruised black, and showed him Lymond's emeralds glittering around Mariotta's neck, sharp as knives, and Mariotta's fingerprints on Lymond's skin.

"I am not prepared," said Lymond, "To discuss your wife."

"Then am I to believe your concern is for _my_ welfare?" Richard said. 

His brother stirred. He said, "Hast thou no mind of love...?" He had said it once before, in Paris, on a warm summer night. The windows had been wide, and open, as they would never be at Midculter, and the bed wide and soft. There had been a lutist in the garden, and later, a nightingale. Richard had thought himself a man.

In cruel cold of February in Scotland, Richard snarled, "When the last person you touched was my wife? When her scent is still on your fingers?"

"I did not touch your wife," said Lymond, very clearly.

"I don't believe you," Richard hissed. He had, it appeared, both hands on his brother. Expecting resistance, he met none. Lymond - Lymond, under Richard's hands, was shaking, a deepset, slow, thrumming of blood and bone. He was whipcord thin, hardened, half a stranger, his body not that of the boy Richard had loved, his familiar edges worn down by other men and other women. "Or was it that she touched you?" The thought burned. He imagined he could see the traces of his wife's touch, could set his fingers where she had set hers - he was scrabbling at the neck of Lymond's jerkin, he realised, and Lymond was letting him. They were sprawled across the bed, entwinned like brawling lovers - Richard felt something rip and tear, the jerkin was gone. Enflamed, he reached for the shirt under it, tore it open, and found his hands on Lymond's skin, the bare-naked honesty of flesh and bone. 

Lymond did fight him then, but it was too late. Richard had felt the welts on his brother's back. He recoiled. He had known, of course, that Lymond had been in the galleys, but that the scars of it had so cruelly torn flesh was a horror he had not expected.

"Have you lost your courage?" Lymond snapped. 

Richard reached down, took Lymond's prick in hand, and brought him off. The swiftness was shocking: Lymond, so cool, spilling so fast, his prick leaping and spurting under Richard's touch in adament surrender, his breath stopped in his throat for agonising, shuddering seconds.

Thoughtfully, Richard wiped his hand on Lymond's breeches. "You gasp like a beached porpoise when you spend," he said.

"And with how many beached porpoises have you ever made acquaintance?" Lymond enquired, with flattering shortness of breath. He was still on the bed, neatly restoring his clothes to rights, scars hidden. Richard did not attempt to touch him. 

"More than you, I'd wager," Richard said.

Lymond, amused, snorted. There was a shuffle of cloth and bed linens. His hands were cool and knowing: Richard, restrained and afire, found himself undone by that touch. 

Afterwards, he thought Lymond would leave. But his breathing settled, and they still lay on the bed, apart. It seemed they had attained some degree of harmony. Eventually, Lymond said, on a breath of laughter, "Favoured in the prone..."

"Will you come home?" Richard asked, abrupt.

Lymond rolled to face him. "And join the happy household?" he said, dry. "What will you say to your wife, brother mine, when it comes time to retire? I love you too, but I loved him first...?"

It was too much, Richard thought, to expect this fragile flowering anything other than grist to Lymond's mill. The smile, and and the snake under it, which could not hide its nature...

Lymond said. "That blade cuts both ways."

Startled, Richard glanced across the chasm of the bedsheets. His brother looked back, the cornflower blue of his eyes grey in the moonlight and his hair faded to pewter, casting his face older, harsher, a man who had made hard choices and bore his own regrets. 

He said, "You have your own lands. But Sybilla, you know, will welcome you." 

"You forget," said Lymond, "I am landed no longer."

Richard said, "The Culters still carry some weight." 

It was an offer he had not expected to make, nor Lymond, unguarded for an instant, expected to receive. 

The portcullis slammed down. "For now, I prefer to act outside the law," Lymond said, "I have cause."

"Haunted and hunted," said Richard.

" _Tant pis_ ," said Lymond. "Thus the outlaw's lot. Alas! Alack! Although, if we are to lay any truth between us, there are some advantages to the role. Consider, for example, the lilies of the field, which neither reap nor sow-"

"You owe me forty shillings," said Richard baldly, adjusting. Lymond, at last, was smiling. The citadel was guarded, but the bridge remained. "That was Sean McGhie's best brood mare you took, and his church beaver, besides."

"Well, if that was his church beaver, heaven help the weekday one," Lymond said.

"Could you not even deny it!" said Richard.

"I thought I was confessing?" said Lymond, guileless, sweet as a potted pansy. "To wit, a man of wisdom and no religion, _Fìrinn Dhè_ , contrivance bold and enterprise diverse."

"Do you even listen to yourself?" said Richard. The mood had lighted: he was, he supposed, no longer suspected of a stiletto under the bolster. "Govern your own affairs. I have no need of your advice in matters of the heart."

"No. Of course you don't," said Lymond. "Nevertheless-"

"Lymond," said Richard. Intimacy, he recalled, had always stung his brother deep. He could barely recall, now, the Francis who had worn every emotion on the surface, the noisome blond child at Sybilla's knee, petted and protected.

"Ah. _Si vis pacem_..." said Lymond. 

He let the phrase trail off. Richard, who had received, he believed, much the same education, did not need to search for the tail of it: if you want peace, prepare for war. He could have trotted the same adage out at every hasty meeting of the border Scots between Martinmas last year and Candlemas this, and now indeed war was upon them. In the morning, he would pray for peace, and take up his sword. 

"I must go," Lymond said. He dressed in silence, swift and efficient, and carried his boots in one hand and his sword in the other. It was a workaday blade, Richard thought. He had assumed Lymond, silenced, would leave as he had arrived, but his brother hesitated, his voice low.

" _Pèse bien: Qu'est-ce du monde, O mon amour doux? Si l'amour manque et la plaisance ce n'est rien..._ Have a care to yourself. Do not - Richard, all is as it was."

"I know," Richard said.

Lymond left him then, slipping out of the bed and room as silent as any spectre. Richard, restless and alone in the soiled sheets of his own dishevelled bed, considered the repeated and disquieting transgressions of the Culters, in which he was as guilty as his brother. If love fails...but then, if there was excess of it, not lack...Ah, Mariotta, he thought, with sudden and wrenching shame.

Christus, but his bed was cold. All Lymond's lingering warmth was gone, the sheets left threadbare. Richard dragged the blanket closer, wishing for a good sable coverlet, a feather pillow, his wife - what a credulous dunce he had been, to drag his Irish bride willy-nilly into the affairs of the Culters. A knave, a maid, how merry they be... But there was little merriment in Lymond's pastimes. The shadow of the Tolbooth, he supposed, and the block beyond it, or the hangman's noose. A knife in the dark, and none to tell on't - Richard, eyes open, found himself aching for the crossed hilt of his sword. No hand but his, he swore. If it must be done, it would be his hand that would have the doing of it.

He had loved the child, and before God, he could not but love the man.

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> _I am the knight. I come by night,_  
>  _As secret as I can_  
>  _Saying, Alas! Thus standeth the case_  
>  _I am a banished man._
> 
>  
> 
> The Nut Brown Maid, anonymous but probably female poet.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Hast thou no mind of love...?_
> 
>  
> 
> The Lover and the Nightingale, Blind Henry the Minstrel 
> 
>  
> 
> "The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit."
> 
> Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
> 
>  
> 
>  _Si vis pacem para bellum_ \- f you want peace, prepare for war.
> 
> Tacitus
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Pèse bien: Qu'est-ce du monde, O mon amour doux?_  
>  _Si l'amour manque et la plaisance ce n'est rien_
> 
>  
> 
> _Think well: what is this world, my darling dear?_  
>  _If love and pleasure fail, then nothing's left..._
> 
>  
> 
> A la fontaine je voudrais, Jean-Antoine de Baif.  
> (Note: the last line as originally translated reads _If love and pleasure fail, then nothing boots..._. The adjustment is my own.)
> 
>  
> 
> Most quotes listed are sourced from Elspeth Morrison's _The Lymond Poetry_.


End file.
